Hello, we are social. We’re a global conversation agency, with offices in London, New York, Paris, Milan, Munich, Singapore, Sydney & São Paulo. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media.

We’re a new kind of agency, but conversations between people are nothing new. Neither is the idea that ‘markets are conversations’.

Initially, some of the appeal of Instagram was being part of a member’s only club. Die-hard users balked when Instagram for Android launched because they didn’t want Android users in their club.

They didn’t want their platform ‘diluted’, even though many Android phones have camera comparable or better than an iPhone.

The same thing happened when the Facebook deal was announced. But here’s the thing; for Instagram it was either evolve or die.

Instagram wouldn’t have been able to fight off better funded apps by bigger competitors forever. If not this deal with Facebook, Instagram may have been bought by another big company and gutted.

Facebook + Instagram is better than no Instagram at all.

Instagram wasn’t going to be free forever
Instagram is free to download. It doesn’t make any money. Thus far it has run solely on investment funding, meaning at some point they would have had to monetise to repay investors.

Either they’d have had to start charging for the app – driving away new users – start charging for filters, which would have pissed off their core fans, or start rolling out ads, which would have pissed off everyone.

That doesn’t have to mean simply ads. Data is king, and Instagram will provide a ton of it via social graph integration.

Monetisation may come in the form of sponsored content and accounts, as it does on Twitter, or perhaps in the rebirth of Facebook Deals – dishing out offers to users who check-in with uploads from restaurants or hotels.

For now, the Facebook investment gives Instagram time, money and support to improve the app before monetisation in any form is even considered.

And let’s face it, whether you love it or you’ve never heard it, they need to make improvements.

Instagram is a flawed platform
Instagram works because it is simple. True. But it could also be argued that the app is too simple. It’s lack of features means it lacks true social and viral potential.

At the moment it’s a closed graph. Unless you go to the popular page, your feed is populated only by content created by users you follow.

Users can only like or comment on each other’s pictures. There is no curation aspect, no retweet/reblog/repin function, the same functions that have proved the success of Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest.

There is no way to manage more than one account. No way to filter posts into separate content streams.

You can’t, for example, have a separate account or separate stream for food pictures and sunset pictures, something which Pinterest has proved users want in order to better navigate content.

There is no tagging function on images, users can only be replied to in the comments, and then only users on the Instagram platform.

At least some of these gaps in the Instagram experience will be explored now, and hopefully we’ll have an even better native app to use.

Instagram isn’t dead
“Where’s Gowalla now?” said a user on Twitter, complaining that Facebook will be the death of Instagram.

But Gowalla, along with many of the acquisitions Facebook has made, was a secondary platform, miles behind Foursquare in terms of user adoption.

Facebook made those acquisitions to bolster their talent pool and internal development projects.

But Instagram is different. Instagram has a massive user base and no competitors in sight.

With that in mind, the app will continue as a standalone product, just as YouTube has underneath the Google umbrella.

Nice article Dan. Good to see someone trying to give a balanced review instead of the bah-humbug, I only liked them before they went commercial, baloney from many commentators.

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All interesting points. I was never a major fan of Instagram for the very same,
limited social, non-interaction, reasons you mention above. I saw its popularity as a sham bolstered by people that fell mostly in the amateur, hipster image-making realm. The app is nice and it works well, but there are plenty out there that do the same or better. Instagram did it’s best work in amassing a huge following and that seems to have paid off far more than any feature of the app itself. It’s hard not to be happy for the developers.
What Facebook might do with it, somehow feels predictable. It will probably fall inline with the rest of their user experience format. I would have been super excited had Instagram went with Google to give G+ a boost.

Great post, Dan. Answers will slowly unravel to the question that remains in my mind: how will we see advertisers be encouraged use Instagram-in-Facebook as a storytelling device? Could be exciting. What do you reckon?